When I began this blog, it was to keep me on my Bible reading with the help of friends who would stop by to read and comment on what I was reading. It was with the following verse that this was established:

But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, and await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love. Jude 1:20-21 (NLT)

It has truly been a blessing to write about what I am getting out of the Bible and sharing it with others. And I want to share this blessing with others, but I am a bit stuck. Last night, Carrie was checking out the site and she said, “I love to read it, but I just don’t want to comment.” Without her knowing it, she kind of blew my plan out of the water. But, this was a good thing.

I come to you now. In expanding this site, what do you think would be most helpful to you? Here is what I have come up with so far:

1. Make it a community site, like Facebook or MySpace. You would have a profile and your own blog to join the conversation. This is where I have been leaning, but I am not sure enough people would want to add another profile and password to their lives. Some people just don’t want to write, but they love to read. I totally get it.
2. Make it a magazine site, with others writers other than me to share their observations as we go through the next year reading through the Bible.
3. Keep the way it is.

The bottom line is this:  I feel God is leading me to add more voices and visions from the Word here. The Bible speaks to everybody in different ways to different people. If everybody saw it the same way, we would all go to same church! But we don’t and I love that everybody gets it differently. Let’s discuss, debate and revel in the Word of God. That is the vision for the site and I want to do it in a way that reaches the most people.

So, what do you think? I am ready to start a movement to get everybody reading in 2009 and I want to provide the tools to help everybody continue through the year, but I need your help. Comment below and let me know and let’s see how many people we can get to read the Good News this year. Thanks.

Popularity: 51% [?]

My friend Greg and a group from our church are currently on a trip to tour the Holy Land. I have been helping him out with some of the pictures and I have to tell you, it has been fascinating following his travelogue. So, if you would like to experience the trip along with them, click here to catch all the details. It is a blast. I can’t wait to hear about it when they get back. Enjoy.

Popularity: 22% [?]

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I am working on making some changes to the site and as I had experimented with in the past, it moves this blog to another location. If for some reason you get here and this blog has gone away, you can find it at http://matt.mybiblejournal.com. This probably won’t happen for a few days at the earliest, but I just wanted to give you the heads up. Thanks again for checking in.

Popularity: 29% [?]

A blog post, perhaps? I know it has been a while since I got on here. And there is good reason. God has been working on me hardcore and the blog has not been part of His plan. But, now it is. BIG TIME! There are going to be some HUGE changes to this site that are God-sized and I am so excited to get them online. It will come very shortly and I can’t wait to share.

As a very small clue, I share something from my reading today:

Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, and keep a humble attitude. 1 Peter 3:8 (NLT)

I know that is not saying much and I am very sorry for the tease, but I can tell you that more news will come very shortly. Thanks for being there for me.

Popularity: 22% [?]

As Christians, we’ve all had the conversation with other Christians. It is the “my Church is better than your Church” conversation. Now, we would never say that, but it begins as, “This weekend was incredible at my Church. Pastor Soandso said…”. At which point, your friend says, “Well, my Church was even more incredible…”. The fact is, we are all one Church and that is why I was so excited when I found out about the One Prayer series.

Now that we are half way through the One Prayer series, I thought it might be finally time to write about it. Actually, I knew this series was coming a month before it did and I wanted to blog about it then, but teachiing and summer got a hold of me and I was unable to. It is incredible to participate in this with Palm Valley Church, along with so many other churches around the world. I can’t explain it as well as Craig Groeschel:

All of which leads me to this: In my Daily Read a couple of days ago, I came upon Acts 10 and 11, where Peter is summoned to Caesarea where the Holy Spirit comes upon the Gentiles, whom the Jews believe should not be a part of this new church. When Peter arrives back in Jerusalem, he’s getting the business from the Jewish believers and he responds with the best comeback ever:

“And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?” Acts 11:17 (NLT)

Yep, we’re all in this together folks. This series and movement is incredible. Building churches in other nations, uniting established churches around the world and learning from other great teachers from around the country. Now this is God-sized vision and it is fun to be along for it all. It is awesome to, as the One Prayer website explains it, “Refocus our understanding of the Church as a body of believers instead of a physical location.”

So, what’s your One Prayer? Good stuff…

Popularity: 22% [?]

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post it, but in the end, I thought that some of my family from out of town might want to see it. Now understand, I have a little pipsqueek video camera that was at the back of this room and I don’t think it was made for this type of thing. Perhaps if I had zoomed in more, you might be able to see my facial features, but I doubt it. So here you have it, my first lesson:

So there you have it. If you made it through at least one minute of it, I congratulate you. It is pretty hard to watch because of the quality, but I appreciate the effort. It has peaked my interest in video though. We need to get a better camera! Thanks for everybody’s support!

Popularity: 24% [?]

I really need to go to bed after all the festivities that I have been involved in over the last few days, but I had to share a couple of things that have happened:

After arriving at our family get together yesterday, a few of the in-laws had discovered the site and were (in the words of the classic film “When Harry Met Sally”) “quoting me back to me!” That was awesome and I so appreciated it. It may have been the best gift that I received.

On Saturday, my parents were in town to celebrate Christmas and I had to work as a sports engineer for the Vancouver Canucks. I was fortunate enough to be able to get my parents and my kids tickets to the game. They all enjoyed the game and it was felt so great to give this gift to them. I can’t tell you what it meant to me to provide this experience to them. But it was something that I saw in the tunnel of the arena that struck me. It takes some explaining, but follow me on this…

In Canada, hockey is the sport of choice. And much like the NFL in the US, there is one night of television for the sport and it is Hockey Night in Canada. One of the hosts of this program is Don Cherry. The CBC television network, which broadcasts the game has the best description for the former coach:

Every week on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada, Don Cherry gives his sometimes inflammatory views on the world of hockey. What he says, and how he says it, has drawn devotion from his fans and criticism from his foes. Some argue the coach known as Grapes has no place on television; others say he’s the only genuine voice left in a country obsessed with political correctness. Entertainer to many, agitator to some – either way, there’s no denying Cherry is a hockey original.

With that being said (that one is for you Kathy), you now understand as I set up for my broadcast that I stop in my tracks as Don says on camera, while wearing a Santa tie (and I paraphrase):

“I just want to say that I love that Santa, but let us remember that that this holiday is because the little baby Jesus was born this day. I just had to say that…”

Here is this guy, the Don of Hockey as he is called, talking about Jesus on national Canadian television! That was the most awesome thing ever to me. All of Canada, where hockey is religion, and the spokesman for it is reminding everybody why we are celebrating. That is a true leader. Can you see anybody on national TV in the US doing this. Heaven forbid! They might offend somebody! I might be off base and maybe it was just cool to me, but I am now a bigger Don Cherry fan than anybody in the US.

If you take anything from this, it’s that inspiration comes in the most unlikely places. We need to know it when we see it. Good luck and Merry Christmas. Way more to come!

Thank you.

Popularity: 15% [?]

So, after a great day of family, friends and food, I sat down to my computer and saw this from Seth Godin (read it and come back). While I don’t have nearly as many readers as he does, I couldn’t agree more. The reason that I started this site was for accountability for my Bible study and the fact that there are others that are drawn here to do the same means the world to me.

But, unlike Seth, this blog is for steady Bible reading and study. And let’s face it, that is really where our attention should be. And, it is not easy. With all that we have to do in our lives, it IS easy to push it aside, but we really need to make it a priority. Just like diet and exercise, when things get challenging we tend to skip them, but we must make it a habit and push ahead.

Speaking of being uncomfortable, Seth says this about the holiday shopping rush. Thank goodness God is not a retailer!

Thanks for joining me and helping me in my journey. Read on…

Popularity: 15% [?]

As you may have noticed since this post, your feeds have not disappeared and the multi-blog site is nowhere to be found. Thanks to a client emergency and other commitments, I was unable to get the site revised. I was darn close and then, BAM, here came the work. With that being said, I am excited to say that with the Thanksgiving holiday coming this week, I have no commitments for anything: work, volunteering, etc. Nothing, NADA! And I have to say, we are pretty excited in this household.

Don’t get me wrong, we love all that we do and thank God daily for these blessings. But, it is really going to be nice to just hang out at home. So I will be pounding out my projects and I am going to break that up with some cleaning of the home office. You probably thought you would never hear that, but I am pumped to clean and work! I know, I’m sick.

Finally, I will be blogging Revelation. WHOA! I have read the first couple of chapters and I can tell it is going to be a challenge, but well worth the posting. And, I believe that I am going to take my time and finish through the end of the year. I could probably bust it out in a week, but there are several determining factors that have led to this decision:

1. It is a heavy book. I want to do it justice.
2. I want to start Genesis 1 on the first day of the new year.
3. Palm Valley Church is going to be reading the Bible as a church body and I want to take part.
4. Holidays always mess stuff like this up.
5. I want to work on the multi-blog site.

So there you have it, the plan for the rest of the year. As with any plan, I expect that there will be flexibility to it, but I hope it comes off as I have envisioned. As always, thanks for stopping by. Read on…

Popularity: 31% [?]

For those of you that have added myBibleJournal.com to your feed reader (what ever your RSS reader of choice is), this feed may go away this week as I think that I am going to be able to accomplish my goal of having a multi-blog site operational by this week. It is definitely going to be a work in progress, but I think that I can have the first version up and more online Bible journals up shortly.

As for my own writing, I am going to have it at matt.mybiblejournal.com. There is nothing there right now, but I believe that I will have it up tomorrow or Tuesday. Thanks as always for being a part of this journey and keep stopping by.

Popularity: 18% [?]